In some ways, the SDGs are refreshingly ambitious. Finally the global institutions are getting serious about eradicating poverty. They even grapple with reducing inequality between and within all nations. Unlike the MDGs they’ve even remembered to include a decent consideration of environmental limits and climate change. So why it is that the more I read of the targets that sit underneath some of the goals then the more confused I become?

Meeting the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) – i.e. getting to zero extreme poverty everywhere by 2030, is not going to be easy, nor cheap. Business as usual won’t do, and doing things differently should include framing policy making for poverty eradication in terms of poverty dynamics: policies to bring the chronically poor up to the poverty line, policies to support escapes from poverty of those who have reached the poverty line, and policies to prevent impoverishment (Shepherd et al., 2014). While different policy packages will be required in different contexts, three areas of interventions will be essential everywhere and for all poverty dynamics